The Angel Dilemma
by Fey or Fi
Summary: After Angel is kicked out by the Flock for a misunderstanding and captured by the School, she spends years locked up, practicing as an incomplete unit with two of her new friends. Now that they've escaped, they just need to survive on their own to find Max and warn her about the Unit System... except that the Flock could be anywhere.
1. Chapter 1

**Angel**

_Maybe_, I had gone too far. After all, I was seen as power-hungry, wanting Max out of the way so that I could lead the Flock.

And I _did_ want Max out of the way. It was dangerous, for her to be the leader. It was dangerous for Fang to be the leader, for Iggy to be the leader, or Nudge, or Gazzy. It was dangerous for me to be the leader. But not quite as much as everyone else. I was meant to be the insightful one, the one who opened the doors to second options. I gave Max a second option, one to eventually save her life. Where did it get me?

A nice little crate at the School that I shared with another Avian American named Wren and no hope of being rescued by the Flock, since they kicked me out.

It's been six years, since Max "saved the world", and of course, it needed saving again, but she was probably off on her adventures, not aware of her danger or the world's danger or anything like that.

The danger? The School. Yet again. Remember the Erasers? They've all expired, so the School came up with Unit System, which they've recently started a beta test on. Each unit is composed of a three "fighters", a "tracker" and a "commander". In my unit, we've only got three of us so far, and we're not going to be released until we've been brainwashed into following the School's orders. We're actually the third unit to be developed, but the other teams' "components" haven't "fully developed" yet. In short, they're all younger than two.

I'm twelve now. Wren, our only "fighter" so far is eleven, and Raven, our "tracker", is fourteen, about Gazzy's age.

My hair's still blonde, but it's lost most of its curl, so now it's wavy at best. I would assume my eyes are blue; they can't have changed much. Raven has inch-long auburn hair that sticks up from his head like he's been shocked, evenly mixed between brown and red, and brown eyes like Max's, and Wren has dark brown hair with light brown streaks that sits in looping ringlets, and clear, blue eyes that stand out.

Right now, I'm watching Wren fight, since it'll be my turn when she's done. She gets to use any trick she wants, and she does, kicking and punching whoever she wants, wherever she decides will hurt them most, which is what she's trained to pinpoint. She kicks a boy from one of the other sections in the nose and he signals that he's done with the fight, his monitor going off to signal that if he continued to be hit like that he would die quickly. She punches a girl in the ear, and she (the other girl) winces. Another boy grabs her arm; she twists her hand and pulls him towards her, kneeing him _there_, then the timer goes off, saying it's been ten minutes and it's someone else's turn, mine.

I'm not as good as Wren, but I abide by different rules since I've been appointed as "commander". They're using these fights to build up my stamina, energy, strength, and ability to dodge, because I "need" to be able to call out commands and codes that stand for different approaches. I need to be able to think about things other than the fight, because I get to come up with the strategies.

They have kids from other sections attack me. I have to block them, keep them from being able to attack me again and shout out the name, purpose, and steps of whatever sequence they have projected on the walls.

I loose sight of the first kid, and I know he must be behind me, so I turn ninety degrees, hitting him in a pressure point and he collapses right before the second kid tries to strike, and his hand hits my arm instead of my face. Words are printed on the wall.

"E, B, D, A, C!" I shout. The girl hits me in the nose, and I fight the urge to see if sneezing helps like Wren tells me it does. "Ambassador technique!" I block someone's fist coming at my mouth and knee them in the stomach. "The fighters protect the tracker and," I pause to clap the ears of whoever is in front of me, "The commander, but they still," I duck a kick towards my head, "Leave the commander and tracker visible!" The words change, so I've gotten it right.

"D C, E, A B!" A fist comes towards my head, and I swing my arm up, "Army technique!" The last two opponents circle around me, and I turn too, following their movement in the corners of my eyes. "Fighters' first priority is attack, tracker and commander," I knock out the girl and I turn to face the boy, "defend themselves!"

The words change again and the timer goes off before I can read them. The scientists move to shove me into the crate with Wren, and I'm ready, because when the one with the security codes comes near, I read them off the page and recite them to Wren as the crate is lifted back onto its shelf. We'll escape tonight.

* * *

The security guard from the lobby (which is just for show, the lady at the desk won't actually let you through) comes to check on us right before he leaves the building. There aren't many of us, so we stay in one big room at the center of the building, which is connected to about one hundred labs and other rooms with testing equipment, a network of sections dedicated to all sorts of tests.

He shines his flashlight around, but only over two rows because its really just a show to scare us. He doesn't actually check us over, he reads the schedule to know what time he needs to show up in the morning. Then he leaves.

Wren fidgets, the way she does before falling asleep, but I feel a piece of plastic touch my arm and I know that she's about to unlock our crate. The bars below me shift, and I feel the grate my leg is resting against swing away. Wren's already left, I could hear her opening another crate: Raven's.

Raven gets out of the crate. I can hear his grate squeak a little bit, but it does that anyway so it's not suspicious. Wren grabs my left hand and connects my right with one of Raven's. We move towards the door following her, and she enters the six-digit code. There's a buzzing sound and we're through.

The pattern continues, various amounts of time between each door. Then I feel a breeze. Wren taps my arm twice. Raven's wing hits my cheek. We've done it.

I hear Wren's feather's ruffle next to my ear, and I spread my own, and then we're off, flying outside of testing for the first time in years.


	2. Chapter 2

**Wren**

The lock was easy. Sneaking around was easy. Flying away? Not so much.

I'd never actually flown before. My wings are decorative and small, and it never occurred to me that I might not have been able to use them to fly, since my body wasn't scaled as well as Angel's or Raven's, and I also had no idea on how to hold myself. Do I stay straight up, or do I lean forwards?

Seeing Angel flying ahead of me, all graceful, and Raven flying smoothly next to me, I felt awkward and clumsy. I kept almost tipping over, and my shoulders hurt, and my feet were falling asleep. My shirt, which covered most of my body was billowing around me, and I kept telling myself that my non-aerodynamic clothing was slowing me down, where as Angel and Raven were both wearing shredded, dirty, normal people clothes that were much better for flying than mine.

Angel had escaped before, when she was little. I knew that much. Raven was captured and "altered" at the beginning of the Unit System development, which was two years ago. But I've never been outside of the School.

I used to have a spot right next to a window, when I was little and the only Avian American there. I could see the sky, I saw the grass and the dirt, but it was all lifeless, because the School had control over everything, the bugs, the birds, and the plants. But being the only Avian American, I spent most of my time in labs, hooked up to all sorts of machines and monitors with a bunch of needles in my arms. I didn't think I wanted to escape, not if there was this plain expanse of short, boring, green grass and nothing else. It would just be easier to stay there.

Then Angel showed up. She started her plans to escape, and I kept asking her why, until she explained.

I felt so stupid.

And then Raven showed up four years later and he talked about how he was in seventh grade, and how he played a piano piece in the talent show but wished he hadn't. And even though I knew that there was actually stuff out there, I still felt really stupid. How do you miss something like that?

* * *

The first stop we make is a random house, and we take things from their clothesline: shirts, jackets, pants, socks, and sheets, and then we each take a pair of shoes off the convenient shoe rack on the porch.

Then we keep flying, making a stop at a gas station to take some food, which we may or may not have payed for. We keep going, and after an hour, we're hanging the sheets from some trees like they're hammocks and eating granola bars.

Angel and Raven dug right into their food. They ate like they'd never eaten before, shoving every crumb into their mouths and then opening another package and starting the process all over again.

Another embarrassing truth: all the food I'd ever eaten before was mush, shredded into little pieces that were shoved into my mouth in a way that made me barf it all back up onto whoever was "feeding" me. Never really chewed anything up, nor swallowed a whole lot.

So I watched them, nibbling little pieces and waiting what felt like hours for them to get soft in my mouth, before I started systematically using my front teeth to make little grids on the oats or whatever it was that I had put in my mouth. I felt queasy and awkward, again, because as sad as it is...

I had never eaten so much in my life.

I have a good reason, okay. My entire life, there's been all sorts of drugs in my system, and they can't really test something like that if I've eaten, because they don't know how the drug and the food might react. Sometimes, that _is_ what they're testing, and they spend twenty or thirty minutes with small beakers, mixing various protein powders and dehydrated potato powders, and all sorts of powdered food into water or milk, and I look at all the beakers lined up, thirty or forty of them, all weird, toxic-looking colors, and I already just want to get it out of my stomach, whether I barf it up or not afterwards. Those days were never good.

Thinking about it, I set down my granola bar, and I tell Angel that she can have the rest, because she just gave the last one to Raven, and then I climb up into my hammock and I almost cry, for no reason at all, except that before I can, I fall asleep.

* * *

I wake up with my back against the tree, and I barely remember why I'm there, but I can see the sheet still hanging in the tree, so I can't have fallen through it. It didn't fall out of the tree, I must have gotten down myself, somehow.

I close my eyes and I lean my head back against the bark, even though it hurts my neck, and I just listen. The birds' tweeting sounds follow a pattern; I make a mental note of it and try it out n my head. I try to guess what sort of bird it is, even though the only birds I've ever heard of were wrens, sparrows, crows, and doves. I don't think any of them lived in the woods, but it amuses me for just a few seconds to imagine _those_ wrens, the same wings as mine, the ones that are bright blue and look nice but feel flimsy if you run your hand over the feathers. The ones that the whitecoat that took notes on me called "splendid fairy wrens".

Yeah, I felt super splendid sitting in a cage with a bunch of tubes connected to my arms and little clips on my wings that gave off shocks and made me feel real twitchy. And while I might have been a little small, I'm pretty sure fairies are gonna be smaller.

"Hey." I hear Angel say, and I open my eyes, because whenever she's talked like that in the years that I've known her, she's going to say something either interesting or important.

She doesn't say anything, not for a few minutes, but then she says "Don't let it get to you. I'm sure someone out there feels just the way you do."

But that's not reassuring because she's wrong, even if I don't tell her so.

I grew up in a cage. I undertook six or seven times the number of tests you took for the majority of my life because you and your former family decided to dump it all on my shoulders when you left. I can't eat any of the food we have because I grew up needing it to be as digested as possible before I ate it, which means that all of my food has been stuck in a blender before now. I'll probably starve. But that's okay, because I'll die flying. No, wait, I won't because even the half-mile segments we did yesterday were way too hard for me to keep up for very long. So I'll be left behind, starving and half-dead, just to be caught by the school, where I've spent every moment of my life so far, while you enjoyed all these sights around the world with a once-loving family.

The cause? Oh, I'm unique, _and there's no one else in the world like me._

But I didn't tell her that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Raven**

That night, I dreamed about my old life. A popular topic, I guess, since Wren had been scratching at the red dots the needles leave in her arms, the way she always does when she's thinking about the past.

I saw my mom, my dad, my sister, my Aunt Becky, and it felt nice to realize that I still could remember their faces. They probably don't look like that anymore. Especially not my sister, Hana, because she was eight before and now she's ten.

At the same time, the memories bug me. Raven's not my real name. But I can't remember what it really is. I don't remember my mom's full name, just that everyone calls her Jo, and I know my dad runs a school but I don't know what it's called or where it is.

Most of my memories are from when I was little, the times where Hana and I raced and I let her win because she was four and I was eight, and she never would have won otherwise. They were all happy things, which I was grateful for.

I was lucky, because I knew that Wren and Angel didn't have memories like that.

* * *

When I woke up, Angel wasn't there. Wren was whistling, or rather, she was trying to. She was sitting on her knees in the pile of pine needles that were probably meant to be put into a fire later, and watching a little bird hopping along the ground, making little noises that resembled whistles, but were more air-y.

"Where's Angel?" I asked her, and she turns her head to look at me. She stares for a moment, like she's not quite sure where Angel went.

"She's gone to get food." Wren answers, and her face pales a little bit while she stares at a spot near my knee and swallows like the idea of food makes her sick.

It probably does. She barely ate anything last night.

I change the subject. "Where do you think we're gonna go next?"

"We're going to find Angel's old Flock. I don't know where anything is, if you'd be so kind to remember, so I have no opinions on where you guys might want to go sightseeing," Wren responds, and I feel guilty because I'm the oldest and the most accustomed to people, but I still make it seem like I don't care very much about her.

"Look, Wren," I say, "I really can't understand in depth what you feel. Nobody will. But Angel and I still care, and you can still talk to us."

Wren doesn't look at me, and it reminds me of the talks my mom used to give me when I got in a fight and she thought that I felt like nobody cared. Except Wren wasn't hiding a laugh like I had.

"I'm sure you do care, Raven. We're a family, and family always cares. At least that's what you all say."

She was angry.

I wasn't sure what to do with an angry Wren. I'd never seen her angry before.

Wren opens her wings, and I can see why it was tiring for her to fly yesterday. They're small, bright blue in color, and I guess they're exotic, but they're also decorative, not scaled to her body. I estimate seven or eight foot wingspan, but mine and Angel's are at least twelve feet and we can fly easily. She'd never flown before last night.

This emotional crap is going to kill me.

* * *

Granola bars for lunch. Chocolate chip, this time.

Wren eats less than yesterday, I think. Angel starts a conversation.

"I think we'll start looking in Arizona for the Martinez family. Maybe Max will be there." Angel says.

"If not, what's your second plan?" I ask.

"We'll need to get money. Jobs, since I don't have any access to a card like Max used to."

"So what, we pretend we're normal or something and work jobs for a year? I'm not sure, Angel."

"If it came to that, Wren would have to go to school, 'cause I'm pretty sure she's going to look seven for a while. No, we'll take some from people's bank accounts or pickpocket. We'd need way more than what you could get from a boring job at a grocery store or something." Angel responds with a laugh. Wren mumbled something when she was mentioned. I smile, for no reason other than a somewhat happy mood.

Wren speaks up to tell us that she's going back to sleep, but we all know she won't actually sleep.

"I'm actually not sure what we're going to do," Angel admits, tracing circles into the dirt. "We need basic items that are necessary to survival, and we have no way of getting them. And I'm worried because nobody knows where Max and the Flock are, especially not us."

I had to admit that she was right, we didn't know where the Flock was. I had heard stories about them; I didn't even know who they were. Max was the leader. They kicked Angel out. That was all I knew. I didn't care much.

Apparently, Wren did. I was right, she wasn't asleep.

"Tell us about the Flock. Maybe that'll help us find them. We know nothing about them right now."

Angel sighed, like she really didn't want to think about it. "Max is the leader. She... she was like a mother, she always cared for us and made sure we were okay before she thought of herself. But she was extremely paranoid, and I made a mistake that threatened her. That's why I was kicked out. She thought I was crazy, dangerous, and she didn't like that.

"Fang was the second in command. I thought of him as an older brother. He never showed any emotion, like a rock or something, but he cared, too. He put his life on the line to save the rest of us if he had to. He and Max had a special relationship, a really good friendship, I guess. I'm not quite sure what it was.

"Iggy was the same age as Max and Fang. He was blind, but he was still good at things like cooking and making bombs; things that most people actually need good hand-eye coordination to do as well as him. He didn't fumble around, even though we spent most of our lives running around all over the place.

"Nudge talked a lot. The Nudge Channel. She liked fashion, and she worried about her hair often. But she was still a sister to me, and everyone loved having her around. She didn't like being a birdkid so much after she spent time pretending not to be. She wanted to get her wings taken off at one point.

"Gazzy, the Gasman, he was literally my brother. He idolized Iggy, he did everything with him. He acted like a brother too, and when I got taken back to the School the first time, he wanted to go get me back right away, according to Max. His digestive system was messed up, but I don't think anyone cared too much after a while."

Angel let a tear go down her cheek, and I really saw for the first time how much they mattered to her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Angel**

The lady at the desk didn't even look up when I left. She was busy with her magazine, drooling over pictures of some celebrity and wishing she was married to him. Trust me, some of her thoughts were nasty.

There were no metal detectors or security cameras, and the place was a dump, the walls no longer a solid white but smudged all over with dirt and, in some places near the rafters, with mold. The racks of food and energy drinks were rusted and didn't spin anymore, and the refrigerators that were half filled with old soda bottles weren't on. I doubted it was very hard for anyone to just walk in and take something, no matter who they were.

I still was careful to be quiet as possible, because if the woman at the counter did look up, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get away with taking the amount of food I had shoved into my pockets and the paper bag I'd grabbed from outside of a grocery store on the way here. Twenty-four granola bars, six water bottles, and three sandwiches that we could probably eat over the course of a few days.

We needed to get moving, soon. The School had to have noticed our disappearances; we were their latest project. The Unit System was two years old, most projects lasted about six years (the average lifespan of genetic mutations undergoing constant testing), so we had about four to ten years before the Unit System project ended. And for that time, we'd need to be on the run.

Max is about twenty years old now. So are Fang and Iggy. Nudge is about eighteen, Gazzy fourteen, and I'm twelve. Wren's eleven, Raven's fourteen. The Avian project has been going on for twenty, twenty-one years. The longest project the School has ever worked on. And it only lost priority after fourteen years. All I can say is that I hope the Unit System dies out before then.

If not, we're in trouble.

Speaking of trouble, I only made it around the corner before someone stopped me because of the food.

"Hey, miss, why are you carrying all that food in your pockets? Doesn't it fit in the bag?" an elderly man with a gray beard and a cane leaned against the bench he was sitting on asked me. I stared at him for a second before realizing that I must have looked a bit strange with one shopping bag half full and by pockets bursting with granola bars.

"Right... no, my friend is... super picky... a-about, uh... how things are organized, and I just, uh... well, it's, uh... become a, uh... a habit." I stuttered, not a good liar like Wren and Raven could be.

Wren insisted that it was the same as writing a story or putting the wrong answer on a test because you misread a question.

They gave her tests - _on paper_ tests - at the School?

The man reached up and rubbed his nose, as if it was runny, except it wasn't. He frowned a little, noticing something that was off...

My sweater. Of course. It was the middle of summer, probably a good ninety-something, hundred-something degrees.*

Nobody would be wearing a sweater in the middle of summer.

"Miss, nobody's gonna blame you for taking your sweater off, not in summertime."

"No, it's not that." I muttered. Maybe I wasn't stuttering because it wasn't a lie. "I, uh... I... sunburn! Yes, I sunburn easily!"

I was probably a bit too excited about how easily I supposedly sunburned.

"They sell sunscreen down at the pharmacy on Main Street, miss, I could show you."

"Uh, nope, I spent all the money I brought with me on these groceries! But, uh, thanks, I'll keep that in mind."

I got out of there as fast as I could, because I wasn't sure how long I could both keep my lies straight in my head and come up with more.

* * *

I got lost on the way back.

Even though we bird-kids have a really good sense of direction, it's useless if you don't have any idea where you're supposed to be going. For example, knowing which way is North does not help you in any way if your campsite is Southeast and you can only get there by going Northwest to avoid a large field and picnic area.

Just an example.

Except it's a reality for me.

And I learned the hard way.

And by the way, I am not an airplane.

Just saying.

When I finally got back, Wren was sitting on the ground, staring at Raven, who was perched on a low branch. Staring was Wren's way of getting someone's attention without actually saying something.

Takes forever for someone to notice. Not a great technique.

"Hey, Raven, Wren wants you to turn around," I said, notifying them of my presence.

"Angel," Wren whined, like she was annoyed with me. I grinned at her, and she sighed before grinning back.

"So... food?" Raven inquired, seeing the bag of food and my stuffed pockets.

"Uh-huh," I responded, handing him a sandwich, "Make it last."

He ate about half of it in three seconds before Wren punched his shoulder and reminded him that we had limited food, telling him to chew ten times before swallowing.

He gave her a look, as if to say, _What? Why would I do that?_

Wren shrugged.

"Dr Galley's grandmother used to call him at lunch every day to remind him. And then she stopped after she got food poisoning, and told him to be extremely careful about what he ate in general."

So, maybe we _shouldn't_ do what made Dr Galley's grandma sick.

I mean, chewing something ten times sounds kinda nasty, doesn't it?

**Note: I'm really sorry it took this long to write another chapter, and to be honest, writing as Angel and Raven is not very easy for me. I'm pretty sure I messed Raven up pretty badly, and I don't think I'm going to try again, not from first-person.**

*** fahrenheit, because I'm from the US, and I grew up using fahrenheit. It would be something like thirty or forty degrees in celsius.**

**Thank you to sparks lupin and Birdkid 13 for the reviews!**

**~Fey (or Fi)**


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